Larry Wayne - 2005

Desire to go back

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Do you have any desire to go back?

Yeah, I want to, my wife doesn't want to, I'd like to go back, I would like to go back this August, they had the sixtieth anniversary. But my wife keeps--I don't know, I don't want to go back. Like the criminal that wants to go back to the scene of the crime. But uh, I was over at Bergen-Belsen, with all these lists and I couldn't, I couldn't find this, you know. I got a whole bunch of stuff. Uh, and we took a picture of me in American uniform. Mala was not there. Mala was liberated in Łódź, you know, she went to Łódź. Mala was not with them. But Franka Charlupski and Olga Charlupski and little Franka Igluitz--I don't know whether you know that one too? It's part of the family. Here's one. We all took a, a picture, group picture, 'kay? It was 1945. A number of years back, I don't know how many back, six, seven, eight, may...eight years ago that little Franka's daughter got married, Natalie. And at the wedding, all these people that I saw at that time in Bergen-Belsen were at that wedding. So we took a picture, just like the original picture that I was here, here, here, here, the same way in 1945 that was 1985, whatever it was the year. But that was right, right after the war. And actually, you know, that uh,

[phone rings]--that's not the phone--uh, so I was with friends, so I had everything. Really, you, you know, like, conducted services, you know, and uh, or... Not conducted Yom Kippur services, me and ??? and two thousand soldiers. Bad Nauheim had the only, one of the very few synagogues that were never touched by the Germans.

Do you remember when they burned the synagogues in Łódź?

Yeah, well, the images start running. Not, not many special recollections during the war. I don't read up that much on it to... Whether it's one day or another day, it wasn't much different...

Yeah, right.

...you know.

So you're all now in Bad Nauheim.

All of us, my brother, me, all of us.

And did you talk about what had happened?

Oh, it was happening, it was still happening, I mean, when this was happening.

I mean, was Ruth the last person to see your mother alive?

No, we all saw her at the same time.

Same time that you went in.

Yeah, that was it, that was it. So then, that was it, and uh. You know, after awhile you get so uh, inured, used to death or something that death didn't, didn't... When I came to this country, the United States in 1946 if somebody would have died in front of me I would have just stepped right over, it wouldn't bother me the slightest bit. Naturally things change. Now I'm the opposite, those things bother me.